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Schools ask parents to pay up before kids log on. one laptop per student is the hottest trend in educational computing.

Heather Sutherland was excited to learn her public school system was using laptop computers to teach elementary students such as her daughter. Until, that is, she found out parents were expected to pay the nearly $1,500 cost.
Kevin Lee, center, gets help from Ellie Chung. Fullerton, Calif., requires elementary school students to have laptops.

"I said, ‘What? You must be joking,’ " Sutherland says. "I think it’s unfair that the (school district) is requiring us to ‘pay to learn.’ "

The public school system in this quiet city 27 miles southeast of Los Angeles is pushing the frontiers of computer technology in the classroom with a program that puts a laptop computer into the backpacks of children as early as first grade. It is pushing the boundaries of financing, too, by asking parents to pay $500 a year for three years so each of more than 2,000 elementary and middle school children can have their own Apple iBook G4 laptop.

An increasing number of school systems are using computers in the core curriculum of early grades. Don Knezek, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education, a non-profit group in Washington, says one laptop per student is the hottest trend in educational computing.

By William M. Welch, USA TODAY

Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-01-02-laptop-elementary_x.htm

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